


the filing cabinet

by avoidfilledwithcelluloid



Category: The X-Files, due South
Genre: F/M, Gen, Some crossovers to be added eventually, Tumblr Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 04:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4733402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidfilledwithcelluloid/pseuds/avoidfilledwithcelluloid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A buncha fics from Tumblr that are being filed into one location here on ao3</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Balena, or Bathing

**Author's Note:**

> beep bop i wrote a bunch of stuff on tumblr and now in a moment of panic i am moving a bunch of it over here. i hope that u guys enjoy reading all of it.

Dana leaned back as far as she could and slid under the water. A bubbling sound built up and with her eyes squeezed tight she could feel the water edging between her lashes. She could feel it trying to get in. The push and pull of her hair floating underneath the water made her think of a painting. A painting of Ophelia lying drowned in a lake surrounded by flowers and her long long blonde locks surfacing up next to her like a halo around her whole torso: Dana had seen it in an art book her mother owned.

Risky business, drowning. There was always the chance that, as the air became compounded in the lungs slowly growing more and more heavy, the person might suddenly scramble for life. Somehow sadness that had once seemed so cast iron would become rusted and easily broken. Dana heard the phone ring from under her small solitude and rushed up to the surface. When she broke from the water she gasped, hair hanging a heavy curtain in front of her face.

The phone rang and rang but for a few seconds she could do nothing but stare at the distorted reflection of her own heaving face. She looked shaken awake: retrieved from a dream that had bordered on nightmare territory.

Dana reached over for the phone that she kept on the back of the toilet. Emergencies had become too much the norm and keeping a phone in almost room was a necessity. When she pressed the receiver to her wet and cold face she heard Mulder’s sunflower seeds.

“Scully,” he said and the pop of his teeth around a seed was a chorus to his speech, “Do you think about Bigfoot ever?”

“What?” Dana wiggled her finger in her uncovered ear. The clog of water inside it made her feel unsure of what she was hearing, “Why would I think of Bigfoot?”

“I have no actual idea,” Mulder said, “I guess because he’s out there.”

“Or she,” Dana said.                                                        

“Yeah,” Mulder said and his sunflower seed bag rustled in the background, “Don’t you ever think about all the things that are out there?”

“Mulder is this really why you called me?” Dana rubbed her knee. Outside of the water her skin felt clammy. Soaking in a bathtub too long made everything feel alien to her body; everything became misunderstood by her nerve endings.

“Hm,” Mulder said, “I guess not. What are you doing?”

Dana coughed and pressed her thumb into her kneecap.

“Reading,” she said, “Book my mom gave me.”

“Oh really? What’s it about?”

For a moment every book Dana had ever read was erased from her memory. She stared blankly at the tepid glassy green water as if a title might surface from its shallow depths.

“Water,” she said finally, “Drowning.”

“Sounds like a good beach read,” Mulder said and then snorted at his own joke, “I’m watching a documentary. The history of button making.”

“How fascinating.”

“Beats drowning,” he said. Dana’s hair was dripping and it made a _plunk plunk_ sound when it hit the water. When she put her hand under the water the edges of her fingers and wrist become blurred. Indecipherable.

“ _And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts,_ ” she said as the page from her copy of _Hamlet_ floated up in her memory. She whispered it to her unclear hand.

“What did you say?” Mulder crunched loudly and the narration of his documentary mumbled under his voice.

“Oh,” Dana said and tucked her wet hair behind her ear, “Nothing.”


	2. Dana Scully Meets Benton Fraser

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> when mulder goes missing in chicago scully comes to rip the police a new one and ends up finding a mountie

The short woman was yelling. She was quite possibly the loudest person in the room at the moment and Benton was standing next to a Vecchio.

“You will tell me where my partner is,” she said her voice a steel wire pulled tight across the sound, “Or I will bring the entire damn FBI into this precinct to go through every file you have.”

“Agent Scully,” Detective Huey had his hands up, gesturing as thought to push the agent back, “You have to calm down. You’re making a scene.”

“If you do not give me the location of Agent Mulder,” she said, “I will make more than a scene.”

Agent Scully stared hard at Huey. Her gaze was sharp and made her look ten times as tall. Huey, who was sitting at his desk, shrunk further into his chair with a crumpled expression. When Agent Scully put her fists on her hips her suit jacket was raised just high enough that her firearm flashed for a moment. Benton coughed as loud as he could manage. It earned a bewildered look from Ray and Agent Scully’s attention.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, pressing his arms behind his back with his shoulders pulled back, “but I believe the last time Agent Mulder was here he asked for our files on the recent incident of supposed abductions of transients on Jefferson Street. Perhaps he is still there.”

Agent Scully came up to Benton standing at chest level and looking up at him with her mouth set in a straight line. Ray backed away but Benton met her eyes with the same benign expression he wore when Ray got mad at him for touching the car radio.

“Is that sufficient information Agent Scully?” he asked.

“Can you drive me to that location?” she asked in response and Benton didn’t think twice.

“Of course. We’d be happy too,” he said and was elbowed in the ribs by Ray.

“Excuse me Fraser,” Ray said in an aggravated tone, “Whose car is this that would be driving to Jefferson? Is it yours? Because I could have sworn it was mine and that I was the one who got to say who got in it.”

“Ray,” Benton said strained, “We are entirely capable of giving Agent Scully a ride.”

“You can call me Dana,” she said and Benton nodded, “If you’d like to.”

“We will help you get your partner back Dana,” he said and ignored Ray throwing his hands skyward groaning about presumptuous Mounties.

 


	3. Eugene Tooms goes to Petsmart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i couldn't give u a better description than the title if i tried

All the pets smell: smell like skin, fur and cages. Eugene slunk past the gecko cages running his hand on the glass separating him from them to leave a trail of sticky residue in his wake. He’s looking for something. He’s smelling for something.

One of the workers gives him a twisted lip look for the mess he leaves but Eugene is miles away from them. He’s past and present. Instead of looking back he starts pilfering around in the bargain bin. There are so many toys in the bin all that have textures like rubber. The feel of them is terrible sick against his skin. Eugene reaches and reaches until he finds a collar he likes. It is blue with synthetic fibers that are smooth against his fingertips. Small bumps where the stiches are and attached is a circle of metal where he could write a dog’s name.

Any dog, any dog at all: they would still die before him.

“Are you finding everything okay sir?” Eugene looks up squinting into the florescent lighting at a blue vested employee. When he sees who the customer is the employee’s smile slides off his face. Eugene runs his fingers over the collar again.

“Fine,” Eugene says and then smiles, “I want to see the dogs again please.”

“You can’t see them if you aren’t going to buy one,” the employer frowns but his hand is on his belt. Eugene remembers the keys are attached to the second belt loop on the left. He’s seen the keys before and he’s seen the inside of the dog cages before, “So? Sir? Are you here to purchase a dog?”

Eugene grips the collar tighter. He can feel the ridges digging into the flesh of his palm.

“No,” he says and holds out the collar, “I’m just going to get this.”

The next morning every employee must empty their bags after one of the dogs, an Australian Shepard puppy, has been stolen. One of them slaps down his pants and, horrified, finds that his key ring is missing. Instead there is a sticky residue left on his belt loop and a bad feeling in his stomach.


	4. Skinner and Scully Talking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think the word prompt was "ingraditude" but its mostly like. skinner and scully chattin it up.

Someone flicked the light on and off. Walter Skinner glanced up from his papers with eyes sore from squinting. In the doorframe Agent Scully had her finger on the switch. Her nails weren’t painted and for a moment Walter thought, _she_ _must be too busy_. As if they weren’t always too busy. As if Dana didn’t have _too busy_ in her DNA written like a computer code.

“You still shifting through that stuff?” she gestured to his desk where the aftermath of she and Agent Mulder’s last case had taken over, “I didn’t think it would take that much paperwork for a hit and run case.”

“It does when the lead investigators accuse the drunk driver of being under the influence of psychic teenager,” Walter rubbed the bridge of his nose, shoving his glasses up to his eyebrows, “and then try to detain the teenager with no arrest warrant.”

“But he was the one performing the murders,” Dana stood up straight. Her tone was indignant, “It wasn’t a false accusation and I think if you read mine and Agent Mulder’s reports again you’ll find—“

“I will find more conspiracy theorist jargon packaged like it is scientific fact,” he said, interrupting her and making her stop in her stride toward his desk. She hesitated, leaning onto her back foot with her knuckle pressed nervously to her lip, “The bureau won’t accept that Agent Scully. That’s why we have the paperwork.”

He spread his arms out to emphasis the pile of work he had. Dana pulled some of the stapled memos out, flicked through them while scanning each page with her sharp gaze. Walter breathed in deep and let a steady stream of air out.

“It’s fine,” he said and Dana looked up her eyes not meeting his but instead following the movements of his hands. She had a precise way of looking that made Walter feel more like a living specimen than her boss, “I was going to be staying late anyway.”

“He’s not going to say thank you,” she said. Her voice was clipped but Dana gave him a sympathetic tilt of her head. Going back to the papers, she continued speaking while flipping through them, “Mulder doesn’t like admitting he gets help from people in high places. Ruins his underdog image.”

“God forbid,” Walter threw his hands up. Dana shrugged. With one hand she put the papers back and the other hand she stuffed in her over coat. She was looking off toward Walter’s bookshelf with an unfocused glaze to her eyes.

“It’s not fair,” she said, “Most of the time it’s not fair of Mulder to do that. But it’s just a piece of him. It’s just the way he is.”

“I know.”

“Yes,” Dana said and her gaze locked in on Walter, “I guess you would know.”

She sighed and then righted her posture. Leaving through the same door she’d come in, Dana held onto the door frame and turned back.

“Thanks,” she said to Walter and then exited, leaving the lights on.

**Author's Note:**

> come join me in the pit of eternal suffering at my [tumblr](http://avoidfilledwithcelluloid.tumblr.com/)


End file.
